Ed,
I'm having a beer in the US atm. Now why is 85K good enough with insurance and
700K the price w/o some sort of muscle behind you?Now I'm thinking you are saying we need national health care to solve the problem. I may be wrong so pipe up if I am wrong on that since my line of thought is based on that in this thread.
Government forces health care to provide care at discounted rates and give urgent care to those that show up in the emergincy room. That causes a transfer of expense to other consumers.
Now some consumers are represented by insurance companies and have the clout to take something close to US Government discounts. Not as close, but a good discount.
The only group of consumers left are those that have no powerful group to negotiate for them. That is the guy that pays cash.
So as I see it, the distortions in health care are caused by government, fought by insurance companies, and stuffed up the arse of people standing on their own.
I hope you are not advocating we need government to fix the mess government got us into. Sounds too much like our current state of things in the financial industry.
Instead of single payer, I think we need single price. Paid by those that demand service be given.
Wes